Legacy as Capital: Examining Digital Journalism Startups in India

• In Event: Startups, Innovation, Technology, and the Entrepreneurship Economy

Abstract

Abstract
India’s media sector has witnessed the rise of a number of digital news startups in recent years. Heralded for their promise, these outlets enter a crowded market where they must compete with the digital arms of legacy media, and Indian outposts of international media. They must also contend with an environment criticized for growing corporatization, weak professional standards and repressive state actors. Based on 31 in-depth interviews with founders and journalists at 18 English-language digital startups, this study examines the communicative construction of capital (following Kuhn) and the way these organizations establish their legitimacy as journalistic actors and ensure their financial feasibility. The organizations range from for-profit, venture capital-backed entities that rely primarily on native advertising for revenue, to bootstrapped non-profits that turn to grant funding and individual donors. The outlets also range from one-man outfits that contracts with freelancers and publishes on Medium, to outlets with a 100-person editorial team, a proprietary Content Management System (CMS) and experiments with Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) content.

To understand this diverse landscape, I draw on field theory, specifically the concepts of symbolic capital and habitus (Giddens, Taylor, Bourdieu). I examine how the institutional arrangements of these outlets are shaped by leadership, particularly from the entrepreneurs at their helm, often established journalists with significant cultural capital. Their revenue models are also predicated on their own habitus and that of their stakeholders. In India, as the journalistic field faces exogenous pressures from the economic and the political field, startups rely on scripts that reify the cultural legitimacy of journalism (Orlikowski, Riley) to shore up their symbolic capital. As new oranizations they must establish themselves as part of the industry’s institutional culture (DiMaggio & Powell)), while also affirming the field’s doxa to assert their autonomy. The study closes by examining the affordances and limitations of these forms of capital for the viability of these outlets (following Leonardi).

Author

• Revati Prasad, University of Pennsylvania, Annenberg School for Communication